Where good ideas come from

What I found interesting is that the research found that good ideas do not come from a Eureka moment. For example Darwin recounts his Eureka moment in his auto-biography. Further study of his personal journals show that Darwin had the full theory of natural selection many months before his stated Eureka moment.

According to research, most good ideas come from discussions:

The rise of coffee houses is credited for the Enlightenment period in England

In research labs most ideas come from the weekly lab meeting when people share their mistakes, issues, etc.

Another interesting point was that many good ideas come from the connection of people that share their thoughts to form a complete idea that is worth pursuing.

How can we generate good ideas we can act upon and make our environment better?

We need to interact with people in a situation that is conducive to generating these ideas. We have such an opportunity in just a few week: The Information on Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas, October 24-28.

Think about it: we will be with a bunch of people that have technical problems to solve around the use of technology in general and Informix in particular. We'll listen to presentation on new features, solutions in different industries, best practices, bird of a feather sessions, mingling in social settings such as the Informix celbration on Monday night.